> Do you want to use MPI to chain a bunch of such laptops together
(e.g. via ethernet) or just for the cores to talk to each other? If the latter;
you do not need >MPI. Your SMP operating system (e.g. Linux) will
automatically utilize both cores. The Linux 2.6 kernel also supports processor
affinity which will always >schedule the kernel on a fixed core, avoiding
cache invalidation and stuff like that.

While, I have got a 20 node
linux cluster for MPI runs of a large code. Yet the code is kind of hard
to debug because I don't have control over that cluster. So my
motivation is to run the code using laptop which has two processors with MPI
instead of SMP and use a fancy new debugging tool by IBM,,, if you visit http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/edu/os-dw-os-ecl-ptp.html .
It uses Eclipse visual development kit for debugging. Eclipse is good for
C/C++, but my code is Fortran with CPP wraps for preprocessor. Now
looks like that people have hooked up Eclipse with Fortran ( http://www.eclipse.org/photran/
),,,, I want to give it a try.

If we combine Eclipse + FDT
+ PTP that will be great and we don't have to buy the TotalView
from http://www.etnus.com/ .

Do you want to use MPI to chain a bunch of such laptops together (e.g.
via ethernet) or just for the cores to talk to each other? If the latter; you
do not need MPI. Your SMP operating system (e.g. Linux) will automatically
utilize both cores. The Linux 2.6 kernel also supports processor affinity
which will always schedule the kernel on a fixed core, avoiding cache
invalidation and stuff like that.